The revised Joint Enquiry Report
is now a historical document, but is still relevant.

It was Nottinghamshire Social
Services Department which imported the concept of satanic
ritual abuse from the USA in the UK. It was staff of the
Department who helped to found RAINS (Ritual Abuse
Information and Network and Support). The same staff
ignored the Report's findings and continued to promulgate
the idea of ritual abuse by means of conferences,
articles in the social work professional journals, TV
appearances and an advisory telephone service. It was the
Nottingham experience that became the foundation stone
for a widespread belief by professionals in ritual
satanic abuse and to this day Nottingham is still quoted
as a proven case - which it most definitely was not.

Today RAINS has a membership of
around 200 and a recent survey by the British
Psychological Society revealed that 97 percent of
accredited psychologists who responded believed that
clients' reports of satanic ritual abuse may have been
accurate.

Excepts from the original Joint
Enquiry Report were leaked to Central TV and a copy was
demanded by Kenneth Clarke, Health Secretary and local
MP. In response, the then Director of Nottinghamshire
Social Services, David White, called a meeting on the 2nd
April 1990 at which he stated that he wanted a shortened
version "that would be available for public
circulation" in order that "practice issues
could be addressed." It was emphasised that the
Revised Version must retain all the relevant evidence,
conclusions and recommendations.

I agreed to write this report in
consultation with my colleagues.

The Revised Report was made
available to the Social Services Inspectorate and to the
Government but was then suppressed. It was never made
available to the Nottinghamshire Social Services staff
and the Director refused to allow any information to be
given to other Social Services Departments, despite the
fact that his own staff, who were protagonists of the
concept of ritual abuse, were still providing and
"expert" advisory service. The Report was,
however, widely leaked to the media.

The Report's conclusions and
recommendations were ignored.

The Report had warned that if
the presentations of ritual abuse information were not
stopped there was the likelihood of a
"witch-hunt" developing which would result in
grave injustice to children and their abuse by
professional staff. Tragically, our prediction proved to
be well-founded with the subsequent misery involving
children and parents in Rochdale, the Orkney Islands and
Ayr.

Signed

J B Gwatkin

16 May 1997

Why we decided to publish this document

The full text of
the accompanying report is being made publicly available
for the first time - seven years late - with a new
explanatory introduction by one of the authors who edited
it into this version in 1990.

Readers will now be
in a position to check independently the original context
of the many leaks, references and occasional
misrepresentation of what was (and remains) a very
important document.

Since the early 1980's
the protection of children from sexual crime and
exploitation has become a widely-publicised and emotive
issue in most Western societies. As welfare and criminal
justice agencies began to devote growing attention and
resources, the investigatory net gradually widened from
the family and extended family to private and state
institutions.

The latest development
in this linked chain of events is the frequently-voiced
suspicion that organised networks are responsible for
both previously concealed and known crimes against
children.

The beginnings of this
complex process can be traced back to the United States
in 1983. This soon led to child protection workers
claiming that children were being victimised by networks
of satanists. Their allegations revived age-old social
anxieties that devil worship and ritual child sacrifice
were rife in America. Before long, these same fears began
to spread to Europe.

One of the first
criminal cases in England to raise similar allegations
occurred in 1988 in the East Midlands city of Nottingham.
"The Broxtowe Case" took its name from the
Nottingham district where many of the "T.
family", central to the investigation, lived.
Notorious as Britain's biggest ever prosecution of multi-
generational incest, the Broxtowe Case began to acquire
'satanic' network dimensions.

This development caused
a serious rift between the social workers and police
involved.

In summer 1989, the
Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire and the Director of
Social Services, Nottinghamshire, agreed to set up a
Joint Enquiry Team (JET) to re-investigate the evidence
supporting the claims of an organised satanic network at
large.

The team's full report
was completed and submitted at the end of 1989. It named
all the children, adults, social workers, police officers
and external experts involved in the original
investigation and other cases arising from it. For legal
reasons, this initial draft version was unpublishable.
However, one team member was asked to produce a shorter,
revised version, which could be distributed for the
general information of social worker colleagues and the
police.

Then, in an unexpected
U-turn, an internal decision was made not to publish the
report. Its authors were officially banned from talking
about their investigation or publicising their findings
and recommendations.

The social workers
directly involved in the Broxtowe case, who took a
contrary view of it to that arrived at by the Joint
Enquiry Team, freely promoted their opinions through the
media and in meetings, seminars and conferences
throughout the country.

Between 1990 and 1991 a
rash of "ritual satanic abuse" cases occurred
across Britain - from Rochdale to the Orkneys. In spite
of dozens of children being taken into care and their
parents being accused of bizarre crimes, nobody was
convicted of any crime related to satanism. The media
response eventually settled into scepticism and this type
of case appeared to subside when the Government appointed
Professor Jean La Fontaine to conduct a nationwide
enquiry. Her findings, published in 1994, underscored
those of the JET report.

Yet the controversy has
not gone away; it has taken on new dimensions. Similar
methods to those analysed in the JET report for
uncovering alleged organised ritual abuse networks
continue to be used, resulting in a number of
questionable prosecutions.

The JET report was
written at the crossroads of investigations into
organised sex crime. It has remained unpublished until
this day.

Concern about child
safety is now a top political priority. Questions about
the reliability of some methods used to obtain adult and
child testimony remain unresolved.

The three journalists
who have made the JET report available have taken this
step in the hope that future debate will be open and
fully informed. In the first instance, it is important to
allow the Report and its findings to speak for
themselves, without external commentary or critiques.

Apart from further
concealing the identity of the children, the text is
unmodified.